I’m not even sure it does cost more. I could have a geforcenow subscription for like 8 years before it’s more expensive than building a similar spec gaming rig.

Depends on the service, and timeframes. For geforcenow, you also need to consider the upgrade cycle - how often would you need to upgrade to play a newer game? I'm not sure but probably at least once within that 8 years. Buying a new car, or almost new car, and driving it until it falls apart is a better financial option than leasing. But if you want a new car every year or two, leasing is more affordable - for that scenario. Also it depends on usage. My brother in law probably plays a video game once every other month. At that point, on demand pricing (or borrowing for me) is much better than purchase or consistent subscription. You need to run the numbers.

Depends on how much you play. geforcenow is limited to 100 hours a month, with additional hours sold at a 200% premium. This dramatically changes the economics ( https://www.techpowerup.com/344359/nvidia-puts-100-hour-mont... has a handy chart for this )

Yikes. If you're playing more than 100 hours a month then it's time to touch grass.

I'm not sure what the value of shaming people's hobbies is. 3 hours a day is easy if it's your primary hobby, and likely double/triple that on weekends.

If you live alone by yourself such that the concept of a shared gaming system is entirely unimaginable, maybe you're the one that needs to touch grass

The business model of Facebook, YouTube, traditional TV, app stores, and yes video games depend on people not touching grass.

> Sure it costs more, but your 2TB plan isn't a single harddrive, it is likely across several harddrives with RAID ensuring that when (not if!) they fail no data is lost, plus remote backups. When something breaks the subscription fixes that for no extra charge.

Well yes, of course. And for cloud compute you get that same uptime expectation. Which if you need it is wonderful (and for something like data arguably critical for almost everyone). But if we're just talking something like a video game console? Ehhh, not so much. So no, you don't include the backup system cost just because cloud has it. You only include that cost if you want it.